1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a drum acoustic wire used in drums such as concert snare drums, marching drums, bass drums and tom toms and further to a drum that uses such an acoustic wire.
2. Prior Art
Generally, drums known as snare drums have a drum acoustic wire that is mounted on the drum head of the non-percussion surface side, i.e., on the underside or bottom drum head. There are drums in which acoustic wires are mounted on both the drum heads on the percussion surface side (top side) and on the non-percussion surface side. Furthermore, in some drums, an acoustic wire is mounted only on the drum head on the percussion surface side. These types of drums are also called snare drums.
FIG. 7 shows a typical conventional snare drum.
In this snare drum 1, a drum acoustic wire 3 is provided so as to be selectively brought into contact with and moved away from the under side drum head 2 by means of a drawing mechanism 4. The vibration of the under side drum head 2 is transmitted to the drum acoustic wire 3, thus providing a special acoustic effect known as a xe2x80x9ctablingxe2x80x9d effect, which endows the musical instrument with a peculiar lively xe2x80x9cpatteringxe2x80x9d tone color.
This type of snare drum is disclosed in, for instance, Japanese Utility Model Application Laid-Open (Kokai) No. H58-50372. In this prior art, eight wires are employed. One end of each wire is formed with a ball, and another end thereof is attached with an adjustment screw. The wires are installed between the snap plate and the adjustment screw base.
The drum acoustic wire 3 of FIG. 7 comprises a plurality of fine acoustic wires 3a through 3n. As shown in FIGS. 8(a) and 8(b), these acoustic wires 3a through 3n are installed side by side with an appropriate spacing in between in the direction perpendicular to the axial line of each wire, and they are strung between a pair of supporting members 5a and 5b. 
In FIG. 8(a), the end portions of the acoustic wires 3a through 3n are respectively fastened to the respective supporting members 5a and 5b by soldering, etc. In FIG. 8(b), one end of each of the acoustic wires 3a through 3n is fastened to one of the supporting members 5a, while another end of each acoustic wire is connected to the other supporting member 5b so that the tension can be adjusted by an adjustment screw 6.
Known materials of drum acoustic wires 3 are fine steel wires wrapped in a coil form as shown in FIG. 8(a). Rectilinear wires formed from a synthetic resin such as Nylon (trademark), etc. as shown in FIG. 8(b) are also well known.
Coil-form steel wires make a point-contact with the drum head. Thus, such wires are extremely sensitive to external vibrations such as noise, and sound pressure and noise from bass amplifiers and guitar amplifiers, etc., thus they easily resonate. On the other hand, rectilinear wires make a line-contact with the drum head. Accordingly, such wires show little resonance with respect to external vibrations compared to coil-form steel wires. Rectilinear wires are not usually used for marching drums.
As described above, a conventional drum acoustic wire 3 is comprised of a plurality of acoustic wires 3a through 3n that consist of coil-form steel wires or rectilinear wires. These acoustic wires are fastened one at a time by soldering to the supporting members 5a and 5b, or they are fastened with adjustment screws 6 so that the tension can be adjusted. As a result, the attachment work of the acoustic wire is bothersome and requires a considerable amount of time. Also, it is difficult to uniformly adjust the tension on all the acoustic wires 3a through 3n. Moreover, since the lengths of the acoustic wires 3a through 3n cannot be made longer than the diameter of the drum, the vibration of the wires is suppressed, and the attenuation time is short.
The present invention is to solve the above-described conventional problems.
One object of the present invention is to provide a drum acoustic wire and drum in which an attachment of the wire to wire supporting members and an adjustment of the tension of the wire can be performed easily.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a drum acoustic wire and drum in which a uniform tension of the wire can be constantly obtained.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide a drum acoustic wire in which the attenuation time of the vibration of the acoustic wire can be long, and a large sound quantity can be obtained.
So as to accomplish the above objects, in the drum acoustic wire of the present invention, the drum acoustic wire that is alternately caused to contact and move away from a drum head is formed by a single long wire, and this single long wire is bent and strung in a plurality of turns between a pair of supporting members so that these acoustic wires form a single continuous strand.
Since the acoustic wire is a single continuous wire, the attenuation of the vibration of the acoustic wire is long, a large sound quantity can be obtained, and an acoustic effect differing from that of conventional acoustic wires can be obtained.
A coil-form or rectilinear metal wire, a wrapped wire for guitars, an aramide fiber wire (Kevlar wire), a synthetic resin wire consisting of nylon, and the like are used for the acoustic wire of the present invention.
In the present invention, the bent portions of the wire are supported by supporting members so that these bent portions can slide sideways.
In this structure, since only both ends of the wire are fastened to the supporting members, no excessive load is applied to the wires, and a free vibration can be obtained. Also, the tension on the respective turns of the wire are uniformly distributed.
Furthermore, in the present invention, the acoustic wire can be formed by a plurality of ring-form wires so that they are strung between a pair of supporting members.
In this structure, it is only necessary to install ring-form wires between the supporting members; and each ring-form wire forms two acoustic wires.
In addition, the acoustic wires of the present invention are used in association with an adjustment mechanism that adjusts the tension of the acoustic wires.
In this structure, the tension of all of the acoustic wires can be simultaneously and uniformly adjusted.
The present invention further provides a drum that is equipped with the drum acoustic wire as described above.
Such a drum has an acoustic effect that significantly differs from that of conventional drums.